Time Travelling to Coney Island, 1905 to 1952

Now that summer is fast approaching here in the U.S. (it begins at the end of June), thoughts of past years of frolic at the beach come to mind. So to get a head start on summer and the inevitable thoughts of Brooklyn's Coney Island come to mind (especially among those who once visited there), I have put once again online the five videos about Coney Island that once graced the Museum of Family History's Film Series. You can now watch them at your leisure.

These short films include:

--A group of young women from a boarding school spending the day at Coney Island in 1905.

--A film of Fatty Arbuckle at Coney Island, 1917, which includes visions of Luna Park.

--Coney Island of the 1940s.

--Coney Island Freaks, B-Girls, and a Touch of Tatooing.

--Coney Island in 1952.

So you can now spend nearly an hour getting a whiff of sea air and yesteryear watching these five short films which cover a span of nearly fifty years of the once great Coney Island. Now it is a mere shell of what it was with perhaps large buildings filled with condominiums and a shopping mall in its future, but we can still keep alive the memory of Coney Island in our own minds as long as we can travel back in time through the magic of film. Enjoy--and don't forget the sunscreen!

The videos can be found by clicking here.

The rest of the Coney Island exhibition begins here and consists of the introductory page and a short history of early Coney Island. You can find the first page here.